[dissident]

http://russia-insider.com/en/opinion_so ... _relations

The western public is being fed hate propaganda. This is preparation for war.

As for the above Sunday Times excrement here is a nice graphic:



That's right, Russia has 43% of the senior management staffed by women. NATO has an average less than 20%.

As the saying goes, people in glass houses should not throw stones.

[Peak_Yeast]

A few days ago there was an article in the danish media:

out of 95 boards in the biggest companies 90 were men. - So in order to reach 14 % there must be a lot of women in the small companies?

Or maybe I dont know how to translate "senior management staff" - which is very possible.

[AndyA]

People believe all sorts of crap, whatever they read and agree with is 'the truth'. Whenever I read comments of people claiming the US is a net exporter of crude etc. I realise the world is fucked. People are sheep, and the media has no morals at all and is just promoting an agenda with no regard for the truth. What is shocking to me, is that this actually works. It's getting worse, not better, the lies are getting bigger.

[dissident]

A few days ago there was an article in the danish media:

out of 95 boards in the biggest companies 90 were men. - So in order to reach 14 % there must be a lot of women in the small companies?

Or maybe I dont know how to translate "senior management staff" - which is very possible.

I think it includes the top management levels in all companies and not just the top layer of the largest. There are thousands of managers in Denmark and 90 men looks like just the very top of the subset of large companies.

The Sunday Times should stick to more tried and true subjects.

[dissident]

People believe all sorts of crap, whatever they read and agree with is 'the truth'. Whenever I read comments of people claiming the US is a net exporter of crude etc. I realise the world is fucked. People are sheep, and the media has no morals at all and is just promoting an agenda with no regard for the truth. What is shocking to me, is that this actually works. It's getting worse, not better, the lies are getting bigger.

What we are seeing is very worrying. It is as if back 70 years ago it took iron fisted state propaganda to spread the big lie but today it is emerging spontaneously from the "free" media. Maybe people back in the 1930s did not have college degrees to the level they do today, but they appeared to have more caliber as individuals. We have gotten soft, soft in the head from easy living.

[Sixstrings]

The western public is being fed hate propaganda. This is preparation for war.

If it makes you feel any better, Diss, NATO isn't even capable of war anyhow.

They can't even agree on how to pay for the 5,000 man "reaction force," where the troops will come from, how will you move them around Europe, who's gonna pay for it, bicker bicker blah blah. It's hilarious. US invaded Panama with 30,000, in the 80s.

Now Europe can't even scrounge together 5,000 troops. So they've delayed for a few more years. Don't worry Diss, seriously, nato is no threat. They are just what they seem. They're cuddly socialist europeans, and Russia has a lot more land it can grab if it wants too -- it's there for the taking, by a bold President leading the Russian Empire, doing *bold* things.

According to this poll, the more war the better, the more places Putin invades and macho *bold* things he does, the higher his approval ratings:

A punishing war abroad that sends men home in coffins. Enduring corruption. A currency crisis and a stuttering economy. Pariah status at global summits.

Surely enough to erode any president's popularity?

Not Vladimir Putin's. Poll results published on Wednesday show the approval rating of Russia's leader at 85%, slightly down on last month's 88%, which equalled the record high of 2008.

So just why is Putin so highly regarded at home?

War is good for you

Survey results published by the Levada Centre, one of the few polling agencies in Moscow with a degree of separation from Russia's authorities, indicate that Putin's popularity spikes when he takes decisive, forceful action.

His approval rating also hit 88% in September 2008, shortly after Russia effected a swift victory in its five-day war with Georgia.

A previous high for Putin was in January 2000, when 84% of respondents approved as he sent Russian troops into Chechnya.
http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/11/28/why-russia-is-mad-about-putin

Article about the NATO rapid action force, that they can't even figure out how to scrounge 5,000 soldiers up for:

NATO wrestles with new fast-reaction force prompted by Ukraine crisis

..is proving harder to set up than expected because of shortages of vital equipment and arguments over funding, diplomats say.
http://news.yahoo.com/nato-wrestles-fast-reaction-force-prompted-ukraine-crisis-172832149.html

So there ya go, that's the reality Dissident, there is no big war brewing and nato is obviously no kind of threat, nato can't even get 5,000 troops together.

[Paulo1]

Six,

Then why isn't it working for Obama? If he ramped up in Syria and sent ground forces in, do you think he would be more popular? I don't think so. This isn't to say I don't think he is a coniving banker boy.

[AndyA]

Six,

Then why isn't it working for Obama? If he ramped up in Syria and sent ground forces in, do you think he would be more popular? I don't think so. This isn't to say I don't think he is a coniving banker boy.

I think if Obama had been winning his wars in a matter of hours, or without even firing a shot he would be very popular.
except with the MIC

[Sixstrings]

Six,

Then why isn't it working for Obama?

Because we are Americans, and Russians are Russians, that's why Paulo.

And -- Argentines have a fascist bent too over the years, and other South American places. It's not like there's some unifying field theory of fascism to where the same applies everywhere -- the soup is *just right* in Russia.

Post 9/11, Americans wanted war and something done in response and so Bush was very popular and war support popular but all that went away a long time ago.

Will it go away, in Russia too? I don't think so. They've got this macho culture, all hard right wing "foxnews" type media, right wing has government all locked up. There are no liberals. There can't be peace, without liberals. If a place is all right wingers, then of course it's gonna be war all the time.

Anyhow -- the article is just pointing out a fact, that Putin's popularity surges even higher than the norm, into 86% range, whenever he does something like a Georgia invasion. In Russia, patriotism is tied with supporting Putin. I guess it's like having a king or something, like the old days when people loved their king.

Or the Dear Leader, in North Korea. It's got to be some cult thing. How else do you explain an 86% approval rating.

[dorlomin]

There is not going to be any war between Russia and the west.

[AgentR11]

Anyhow -- the article is just pointing out a fact, that Putin's popularity surges even higher than the norm, into 86% range, whenever he does something like a Georgia invasion. In Russia, patriotism is tied with supporting Putin. I guess it's like having a king or something, like the old days when people loved their king.
Or the Dear Leader, in North Korea. It's got to be some cult thing. How else do you explain an 86% approval rating.

First, I agree with Dor, you can relax, Russia is not going to attack NATO proper unless NATO invades Russia proper, and NATO really don't intend to do any such thing, though for some reason, they are happy if Russians think they intend to do such a thing.

As to Putin's popularity with his assertiveness; I think it can be easily explained by looking at economic and educational cohorts... For the lower half or so, the state does provide enough in the way of services such that they don't freeze to death, and have sufficient vodka to kill sufficient brain cells to live out short, ridiculous lives in a drunken stupor. Go Putin!!! WOOHOOO, vodka... must have more vodka! For your middle income, basic college educated types, of which Russia does have plenty, its a bit more subtle. Yes, sanctions, floated currency, and western disapproval make the chocolate bar and iphone more expensive; but a sense of "my nation has had enough, and we will no longer be ruthlessly taken advantage of by the EU, and we finally have a president that won't crawl around kissing the shoes of whatever EU minister is giving Russia a lecture." If the US had gone through what Russia went through in the 90's and now we finally had a president that would look our European masters in the eye and say, this is what we're doing, you can like, or not like, but we are going to do it regardless. If you wish to go to war over it, so be it. Yeah, I'd be all in, heck I'd be all in even if that president was toting a (D) label after their name; I *might* even vote for him or her. I wouldn't need to entertain delusions of great prosperity to support it, and I'd like accept some pretty substantial downgrades in prosperity if it were necessary to regain our national volition. In the upper cohort, of course you have folks that stand to benefit strongly from the domestication of defense procurement and the weakened ruble (export manufacturers and resource producers); people selling coal or steel or wheat in rubles, with ruble payroll, taxes, and insurance... They be LOVING the floating of the ruble.

Pretty much that leaves as Putin opposition: ideological peacenik types, people with substantial financial interest in continuing to expropriate Russia resources to pay their London mortgages, and loyalists of parties in opposition to Putin's coalition, apparently 15% or so. Which makes fair sense.

The above is just my hunch.

[SeaGypsy]

Vodka is much cheaper to manufacture than modern SRI,s which are in epidemic in The USA, along with a pile of other prescription meds, on top of the now becoming legal cannabis, cocaine & methamphetamine. If cheap vodka is Putin's real power base, maybe Obama should decree the war on drugs a failure & get on with legalising the lot?!?

[AndyA]

If a place is all right wingers, then of course it's gonna be war all the time.

Is that why the US is engaged in endless wars? Not enough liberals huh.

[Sixstrings]

If a place is all right wingers, then of course it's gonna be war all the time.

Is that why the US is engaged in endless wars? Not enough liberals huh.

Yes, there is a difference between liberals and conservatives.

Obama did in fact pull completely out of Iraq -- and I think turned out wrong about that, and conservatives turned out right, because all that happened is that ISIS grabbed all the gear the US gov left there. A small residual force would have been smarter than now having to go back in and do something all over again, that's blown up bigger than a fire that could have been tamped out early.

So there you go, that's a very real concrete difference between O re-elected versus Romney elected last go around. Romney would have left a residual force there, and likely the ISIS thing prevented, those Americans not beheaded, and no new war to fight over again now.

Didn't mean to get into iraq policy, just pointing out that yes there's a difference, between liberals and conservatives.

Liberal hippies really did end the vietnam war.

Sentiment really is very anti-war over here, right now, as opposed to Russia.

Nobody wants war in the US, for any reason, whereas in Russia they're all fired up and stoked up and waving flags and so proud of Crimea, and Russians are pouring into east Ukraine to volunteer, and the Russian gov has the regular army in there too.

Putin's ratings go ever higher. See the difference there? Putin gets people feeling patriotic when going to war, that's why they're all pumped up and stoked over Georgias and Moldovas and Ukraines.

In the US, we have to actually get attqacked for anyone to get patriotic and pumped up like that. Russians are pumped up and patriotic over annexations and seeing Russia expand, that's really very different from the US and how Americans are. Russians are acting more like fascist Argentines did, with the Falklands.

Christ I'm the only American on this forum that's so pro military action. But that's because I can see the strategic realities. Most people don't think that way, fair enough.

Long story short -- no, O announcing military actions does not make him "popular" it makes him less popular. Whereas Putin launching some annexation makes him more popular.

(why are a couple of you arguing this point -- does it make you uncomfortable that yeah, there's a lot of chest-thumping macho patriotism in Russia, and it's annexation and fascism and the same old stuff you see in any other rightist dictatorship in history?

I guess that does make you uncomfortable, because if you admit that then you've got to get off the pro-Russia / pro-Putin perch and get behind the nato flag -- because obviously, of course annexing dictators must be stopped. Of course they must, everyone agrees with that. What kind of world has it become, the day after people think that's okay now?)

[Sixstrings]

There is not going to be any war between Russia and the west.

Yes, I agree.

But what if dissident really believes that. What if that's what they're drumming on Russian tv now. Media is very powerful Dor, it can convince people of anything jut by repeating it enough, and russia has nothing but "foxnews" hard right wing tv channels.

The kremlin only tolerates Moscow Times because it's in english, and mostly read by expats and a few Russians. But if it were in Russian -- it would be shut down for sure.

Any radio station that goes off script away from kremlin-approved views on Ukraine, gets shut down.

So yeah -- you and me know there's not going to be a war, Putin and Russian leadership know that, but what if their tv starts beating that drum and people really believe it. It can turn into a echo chamber and then maybe the leadership starts believing their own paranoid propaganda.

But anyhow, yeah there won't be war with Russia, and also no war with China. Because upper middle class and rich Chinese love European imports.

China is the #1 market in the world for the wines of France.

China loves kentucky fried chicken, and american brands, and euro brands.

It's kind of silly to imagine a chinese war with the west, at the very same time they're doing so much aspirationally, to be like the west, right on down to replicas of Paris and NYC, kentucky fried chicken and mcmansions that look like they're straight out of San Diego -- none of this is native chinese, all if it is western.

They've got the nationalism part, but they aspire to the West culturally. They want Western things, not Chinese things. It's all materialism, mind you -- they aren't wanting the democracy part. (yet)

But anyhow, how could they ever have a serious war with the West, when they've got so much invested in the West. And when they like the luxury imports so much. War would just screw all that up, and they'd be stuck with cheap chinese junk, and even chinese aspire to want better than cheap chinese junk.

[AgentR11]

Interesting anecdote swiped from the general hum of Russia's going to implode Western Wishcasters Inc.

Buckwheat story. (they like Buckwheat, like we like white bread). Word of shortages or crop failures or whatever, and the supermarkets end up bought out with no more in stock.

One of the stupid reporters managed to take a picture and reveal the price. 54 ruble / 800 gram. The price is just too dang low. Its a stable commodity, well loved, and horribly under-priced in a country moving to a true free market system. Of course they got bought out. If someone told me the grocer down the street was selling 25lb bags of the rice I like for $10, I'd go buy every last one of them; or at least as many as would go in my truck.

This is actually a good sign, the rabble have an adequate supply of rubles to react to price imbalance and provide the required consumer->manufacturer signal to provoke additional storage/production/packaging as might be needed. Manufacturers and retailers got a strong pricing signal and should bring the price up to something more reasonable over the course of the winter season, and then keep it there.

Do we like the free market, or not.

Or is it only good for countries we like, and we expect countries we do not like to implement horrible, state destroying price control and intervention policies, so they can fail when competing with our producers... Give it up. Russia is not going back to the Western Oligarch model, its done, and over. Your London friends sucking at the unmentionable of Russian Central Bank currency support will never, ever get their cut again.

And yes, Russian consumers will have to pay what we all pay for rice, buckwheat, or wheat flour. I'm sure they'll survive the trauma.

[Withnail]

But anyhow, yeah there won't be war with Russia, and also no war with China. Because upper middle class and rich Chinese love European imports.

China is the #1 market in the world for the wines of France.

You don't think the Germans were a big market for the wines of France before they, you know, invaded France?

[Sixstrings]

You don't think the Germans were a big market for the wines of France before they, you know, invaded France?

You have a point there, but that worked out because Hitler TOOK France.

So there's a couple different ways there to get the wine. What can China and Russia do, take Europe? No.

I don't see how war is possible. Rich Russians will always want access to Miami Beach and the French Reiviera. They'll never be happy with an iron curtain and cut off.

And even moreso the Chinese -- Chinese really, REALLY love consumerism. So that is going in the West's favor there, the Chinese aren't aspiring to our liberalism, but they definitely aspire to own Western goods.

They're nationalist, yet not jingo -- they want the American or European product, over the available Chinese products. Chinese rich want to be cultured, Western cultured, and Chinese working class love KFC more than rice off a street vendor that may have put plastic in it as a filler.

[Sixstrings]

Gay Russians continue to seek asylum in the US. According to the article, many have advanced degrees and professional success back home and speak english. They could be successful in Russia, but they don't feel safe there.

Article points out that asylum immigrants have a hard time once here, it's a long time before they can work and have to support themselves in the meantime.

With all these problems going on with Russia, federal gov should relax all the work rules for political defectors.

Russians are smart, they work hard and pay taxes, so let Putin keep doing a brain drain and run off the best and brightest. They can find freedom here, and work and pay taxes here, and build this country up, instead of Russia.

And -- it's just the right thing to do.

Any minority group that feels targeted and persecuted by the reigning right winger regime in Russia, really, we should have open doors for them and take them in. Russian liberals and intelligentsia, too.

Anyone getting beaten up in the Putin's Russia culture, should be taken in, it's the right thing to do.

Except for their islamists -- gotta take a hard look at those. Tatars seem okay, not extremist muslim, and they don't like Putin at all.

But regular, white Russians? Sure, open the doors, come on in. We actually need some WHITE immigrants. Now I don't want to sound racist again, I'm just saying, we've already had the border door open for 40 years and since Reagan did the last legalization there's now another TEN MILLION illegal latino immigrants.

I'm for the melting pot -- but it's gotta be a good mix in there, not all latino, not too much of any one group. So I'm not racist when I say it that we should relax the rules for some of these white immigrants. Germans and Russians and Poles etc. play by the rules and wait in line to immigrate. While we've got all these strict rules on them, the door has been wide open for 10 million latinos.

We need European immigrants, too. Congress should address that and make that a lot easier, if somebody is European with a college degree and a little money in their pocket then why not let them in?

We need a good mix. Ukrainian immigration has been good for the US, all these Ukrainian immigrants we have are good immigrants. The Russians are too. And Poles, and east euros. I say let them on in, more the merrier -- and it would be healthier, what's unhealthy is letting Mexico walk across the border but everyone else has had to wait in line, so just let all the Europeans in that want to come. If people are the type that will WORK then that's okay, that builds an economy and grows it.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Had he stayed in Russia, Andrew Mironov would be settling in to a stable job with an oil company, likely with a newly awarded doctoral degree in electrical engineering.

Instead, he faces an uncertain future in New York City as one of scores of Russian gays seeking asylum in the United States because of hostility and harassment in their homeland.

"In Russia, I would have gotten my Ph.D. this fall, had a job and health insurance," said Mironov, 25. "Now, here, I'm nobody."

Yet the sacrifices have been worth it, Mironov says, given the fears that lingered after he was severely beaten by several assailants in the lobby of a gay bar in his home city of Samara.

"Which is more important, happiness or success?" he asked over coffee in midtown Manhattan. "I would say happiness. I feel no fear here."

There are no firm statistics on the number of gay Russian asylum seekers; U.S. government agencies that handle applications do not report such details. However, the Department of Homeland Security's latest figures show that overall applications for asylum by Russians totaled 969 in the 2014 fiscal year, up 34 percent from 2012.

The increase is due in part to the worsening anti-gay climate in Russia, according to Immigration Equality, a New York-based organization which provides legal services for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender immigrants.

The organization says the number of inquiries it received from gay Russians seeking U.S. asylum has risen from 68 in 2012 to 127 in 2013 and 161 through Oct. 30 of this year. During that period, gay-rights gatherings in Russia were frequently targeted by assailants, and the parliament passed a law targeting "gay propaganda" that was widely viewed as a means of deterring gay activism.

Said Mironov of that law, "It helped homophobic people feel the government is on their side."

To get an application approved, an asylum seeker must present a convincing case that he or she has a "well-founded fear of persecution" in their home country. Russia's anti-gay policies and its record of anti-gay violence are factors that could strengthen an individual's case.

Aaron Morris, Immigration Equality's legal director, said most of the recent asylum inquiries came from gay men in their 20s and 30s who had been targeted by anti-gay attacks, while only a handful have come from gays or lesbians raising children.

"If you have kids, it can be really hard to leave everything behind," Morris said.

In several U.S. cities, programs have been launched to assist gay asylum seekers from Russia and elsewhere as they await processing of their applications, which can take six months or more. For the first five months, the asylum seekers are barred from taking paying jobs, so they often struggle to support themselves, even with resumes illustrating professional success in Russia.

In Washington, D.C., housing is among the major challenges, according to Matthew Corso, who has helped the DC Center for the LGBT Community create a program to assist people who are seeking asylum.

"We have no trouble finding them legal representation, but trying to find someone willing to give part of their home or money for food or transportation is not easy," Corso said.

Another group aiding gay Russian asylum-seekers in the Washington area is the Spectrum Human Rights Alliance, founded in 2011 by Russian immigrant Larry Poltavtsev.

Poltavtsev, who studied chemistry at the University of North Carolina in the 1990s, is frustrated by the rules that bar asylum-seekers from working. "It makes no sense because most of our arrivals have advanced degrees and speak good English," he said. "They're capable of being productive, paying taxes, but we are not letting them do those things while they're waiting."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_RUSSIAN_GAYS_ASYLUM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-11-29-12-34-01

[SeaGypsy]

So your suggestion is effectively anyone who shows up with a statutory declaration of their hatred for Vladimir should be granted work rights & residency by the USA... Lost for words...